2019 EDIT: Change of rating. 'Jellicoe Road' is another book I look back on with not much fondness, and I am no longer comfortable with it being on my bookshelf. Maybe I think it's pretentious, overly contrived and melodramatic (ironic, since there isn't much of a plot to speak of, or remember, and why you should care.) Melodramatic yet detached from the characters' emotions and situations. Cynical yet silly, now there's a paradox.
The book is not even magical realism, but it reads like it. Like, the main character is psychic, and has prophetic dreams? And dreams of what happened when she was little more than a baby, and before she was born - dreams of meeting people who died before she was born, but she knows them so well - what? Add in the fact that, for her seemingly perfect memory, even of traumatic events, she has repressed memories of things that are convenient for the book's weak mystery "plot" to work.
I'll never forgive the line of dialogue about Anne Frank: "The girl never kept her mouth shut, she was bloody annoying." THIS IS SAID ABOUT A HOLOCAUST VICTIM. A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD HOLOCAUST VICTIM. Even though it's said by a teenage boy, he isn't called out on it. It's sexist, and in incredible bad taste. It's vile. Most of the characters are unlikable, and all of the adults, as I've said before, are crap, even for YA.
So, unable to defend it now, and in spite of its popularity and high praise, I wipe my hands clean of 'Jellicoe Road' for good. Perhaps it's overrated, not that great, or it hasn't aged well. The same could be said for most if not all of Melina Marchetta's YA novels.
Original review:
Right. Here goes nothing:
'Jellicoe Road' has soooo much hype surrounding it, and for good reason. Even though I'd read a lot of positive Goodreads reviews before picking it up and reading, I kept my expectations fairly low. It still surprised me.
'Jellicoe Road' is a fantastic and fascinating novel, full of memorable and distinctive characters and scenes - an enriching mixture that just makes you choke up.
Like with nearly all books by Melina Marchetta, it has quotable passages and lines of dialogue on almost every page, and they're poignant and beautiful. How Ms Marchetta comes up with all of these life philosophies, I don't know. And it amazes me.
I think I love the setting the most, which is a boarding school in the woods, like a summer camp only secretly full of brutal teens fighting and kidnapping each other for territory purposes. And there's a "Prayer Tree". Treehouses are adorable!
It is certainly not your typical YA romance story either. There's much more depth to it than that.
However...
It's not perfect.
I'll try listing the things I didn't like about this novel:
1. The adults are crap. Really, there's no other word to describe them. Yes, I understand why they're crap - tragic childhood and never learning to grow up emotionally - but the decisions they make don't make sense to me. I won't reveal what those decisions are due to spoilers, but it has something to do with a pet-peeve I have about adult guardians keeping important secrets from their kids for no good reason. Emotional scarring or not, if you love and trust your children then they have a right to know the truth. Knowing nothing will most likely hurt and confuse them more than knowing something. The secret-keeping is there to add mystery to the plot, but most of the mysteries are rather obvious anyway and I found them to be a little too contrived, even with the emotional backing.
2. Some characters had to grow on me long into the story before I could like them, such as Jonas Griggs and Taylor, believe it or not. But I liked characters such as little Jessa, Raffy and the tragedy-stricken but playful kids in flashbacks. Taylor I found to be too aggressive and selfish from the first chapter, but once I grasped her takes-no-shit ways (and she truly doesn't take any shit), and her unconscious desperation to know who she is and why her mother abandoned her on Jellicoe Road, I found her hard not to love and respect as a protagonist. Her life sucks, and she adapts to it by the only means she knows how (especially with irresponsible and thoughtless adults around making it worse).
3. Santangelo's comment about Anne Frank on page 216 of my copy: "The girl never kept her mouth shut, she was bloody annoying." (I wonder if he'd say that if Anne Frank had been a boy. I doubt it.) But I'm sure this is somehow a compliment in context to the conversation he's having with Taylor and the Jellicoe gang, as he then says, "it was like nothing could kill what was inside of her". The character interactions in this book feel realistic and help shape the setting, by the way.
4. The ending, while dramatic, is contrived. It is a pay-off of sorts to something only mentioned a few times throughout the book, and it didn't quite work for me. But it didn't turn out too badly. Because the next, not-so-theatrical pay-off - and climax - is a heart-wrenching conclusion to Taylor's story about self-discovery and what it means to have people around who love her.
I could talk more about of the contrivances in the story, whether or not they are spoilery. However I do not want to put anybody off reading this novel, despite a few minor issues I had with it that made me give it 4 stars instead of 5.
And I do feel bad about not giving 'Jellicoe Road' 5 stars, because it did have a profound effect on me emotionally and mentally, and Ms Marchetta is a genius. I guess the number of things that annoyed me were one too many.
But I do really, really like it. It's a beautiful, wondrous story about maturity, family, friendship, the importance of memories and childhood, and the strength to change. It's a puzzle of a coming-of-age tale about one unique teen, Taylor Markham.
The other characters and their lives are also unique, and add substance to the plot and the way it's structured. Imperfect people make up the heart of the story of 'Jellicoe Road', melodramatic or no.
'Jellicoe Road' is one of those books that leaves you feeling so much that you don't know what to do after finishing it. It is tender-hearted despite its dark themes, and it is as funny as it is sad and shocking.
Ms Marchetta has a gift of making you emotional from reading her writing, regardless of the premise or content.
It may not be my number one favourite book of hers (which is still 'Finnikin of the Rock') - like it is for so many other readers - but there is definitely something special in this. I overall enjoyed the journey on the Jellicoe Road.
Final Score: 4/5
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